


Moments

by captainshellhead, vibraniumstark



Category: Avengers Assemble (Cartoon)
Genre: Alternate Universe Steve Rogers, Alternate Universe Tony Stark - Freeform, Fix-It, Fluff and Angst, Getting Together, M/M, Multiverse, Natasha Stark - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-10
Updated: 2017-03-10
Packaged: 2018-10-02 09:05:09
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,494
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10214150
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/captainshellhead/pseuds/captainshellhead, https://archiveofourown.org/users/vibraniumstark/pseuds/vibraniumstark
Summary: After being trapped in a pocket dimension, Tony tries to find his way home - and ends up lost in the multiverse.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [ishipallthings](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ishipallthings/gifts).



> The first part of our prompt fills for the winner of our charity raffle, ishipallthings! Enjoy!

He has a lot of time to think.

There are no days here, as far as Tony can tell. He tells time by the chronometer on his suit, checked against Steve’s always-punctual “good mornings” and “good nights”. He keeps a note for himself, so that he doesn’t lose count. Though he could always ask Steve, he’s certain that those sorts of questions would worry him, and he has enough to deal with now that he has to head the Avengers alone. 

All of the Avengers take time out of their day to check in with him. Steve, though...beyond the brief conversations and the updates on the state of the team, Steve is like an anchor to the other dimension. He’s a constant presence on the other end of the comm, answering within seconds of Tony’s calls, always happy to hear from him, never put off by the nuisance that is Tony Stark’s need to keep in contact with the outside world.

He’s sure that to Steve it probably doesn’t mean much, but to Tony it’s everything.

There’s only so long he can go on bothering him like this, though. He has more free time than he’s ever had before here, and so he puts it to good use. This isn’t the first time he’s managed to escape an impossible situation...the variables are just different this time.

The first problem is Ultron. Tony was able to shed and shut down his suit to keep him contained, but that severely limited his options. He’s not sure that he can purge Ultron’s consciousness from the suit, nor is he willing to risk failing and becoming the Trojan horse for Earth’s destruction.

So the suit stays, and Tony goes. 

He starts by gutting the helmet. It’s tedious, delicate work, but he pulls apart the suit piece by piece, using his fingers, his teeth, crude tools crafted from other cannibalized parts of the armor. It keeps him busy. Tony was never good at sitting still, and it’s an enormous relief to have a project again. 

Tony mentions none of it to Steve. Every time he signs off, Steve tells him that they’ll see each other soon. They’ll find Tony a way home, they’ll think of something, only be patient. They both know that without Tony, the Avengers are severely crippled in the tech department. Neither of them acknowledges that they’ll have a damn hard time getting him back from their end. Instead Tony agrees, and jokes about how much he’s enjoying his vacation, but all the while his way home is coming together in his hands. 

He builds a crude teleporter. Tony knows it’s a risk. He has no idea whether it’s safe, where it will lead, or even whether it will work at all. He has no way to test it other than to fire it up. Technology doesn’t function in this pocket dimension, but Strange’s spell over Tony’s arc reactor gives him a conveniently magical power source. Steve’s voice sounds a little more strained each time he promises to get Tony home. He can’t wait any longer.

Tony thinks long and hard, with the communicator set out on the ground in front of him. He pulls his knees to his chest and stares at it, the lone, solid light that shows that the comm link it open. 

In the end, he can’t bear to tell Steve. He wants to say goodbye, _just in case_ , but he knows that Steve would tell him it’s too dangerous, and Tony isn’t certain he could go through with it if Steve asked him not to. So instead he asks Steve how he’s been, asks him if there’s anything Tony can do, any problems he can help him solve. He wants to make sure that Steve is okay until Tony can find his way back. 

When Steve admits that it’s late, and it’s time for him to sleep, Tony tries his best to not raise Steve’s suspicions. He's not sure he fully succeeds, but in the end Steve doesn't mention it. 

He tells him, “Thank you for keeping me company.” It's hard to put to words everything he wants to say, when he can't see Steve’s face to gauge his reaction. “It means a lot.”

“Anytime, Tony,” Steve replies easily. “I'll talk to you tomorrow.”

Tony doesn't respond to that, just tells him to sleep well, and then turns the comm off for the last time. 

He sets it on the ground, next to the leftover guts of the Iron Man armor. He’d recorded a message to the team, earlier, explaining what he was trying to do in case they came looking for him. He isn't sure it will play, with the technology dampening effects of this dimension, but he sets the recording device out plainly next to the comm, where they're sure to see it. 

He takes a deep breath, then starts the machine. 

 

It doesn’t hurt, per se. Tony flips the switch on the teleporter and clenches his teeth while the _tick tick tick_ of the mechanism working fills the silence around him. His stomach swoops, like he’s just arced over the very top of a rollercoaster, and then his breath leaves him in a crushing rush, the pressure on his chest knocking the wind out of him. He squeezes his eyes shut because the kaleidoscope of color passing his vision only makes him feel sicker. His white knuckle grip on the transporter is the only thing that keeps it from falling from his hand.

Hitting the ground _does_ hurt, though. The transporter spits him out five feet above a grey-washed concrete floor. He lands hard on his shoulder, but he’s willing to count it a win that he’d managed to avoid falling on his head.

“Well, I’m in one piece,” Tony says aloud to the empty room. His voice echoes off the walls, distorted with an eerie loneliness. “So I guess I’m counting that as a win.”

He’s in what looks like a factory warehouse. He has no idea where, exactly, but the writing on the crates against the back wall is in English, so hopefully he’s not too far from his mark. The warehouse door is locked, though, and the large sliding doors of the loading bay are padlocked shut. Tony ends up managing to wriggle through the gap in an unlocked window. It’s awkward and graceless, and he almost falls on his head (again), but when he makes it outside he turns the corner and sees the Manhattan skyline.

He has no wallet. Everything he had, everything but the clothes on his back and the arc reactor in his chest, is gone, left in Strange’s little pocket dimension. With no phone and no money to pay a cab, and enough stubborn pride to refuse to beg someone to swipe him through for the subway, he’s got no other options.

So he walks. 

The weather is warm, and though the pavement is still wet from a recent rain shower, the sky is clear. It’s a long walk, and Tony can’t remember the last time he’d just _walked_ around the city like this. He feels strangely out of place...but then again, hopping to a different dimension is about as out-of-place as you can get, isn’t it?

He sees the familiar shape of Stark Tower rising in the distance, and makes his way towards it. On the outside he can see small, cosmetic differences, but the overall layout is familiar. Tony heads inside and notes that the employees at the front desk are all strangers to him. He waits patiently in the queue at the front desk for his turn.

“Uh, yeah, hi,” he says to the desk clerk. His hopes that he could slip upstairs without question are very quickly dashed. He sees no recognition on the man’s face, so he changes gears a bit, hoping that he doesn’t think that he’s out of his mind, and introduces himself: “I’m Tony Stark.”

The man doesn’t look at him like he’s out of his mind, per se, but he’s certainly skeptical. “Any relation?” he asks. 

Tony’s not sure what the correct answer would be to get him sent upstairs, so he shrugs. “You could say that.”

“Well, Mr. Stark, do you have an appointment?” 

“Ah,” Tony hesitates, “Uh. No. But this is very important.” 

“I’m sorry, you’ll need to schedule an appointment.”

Tony has no idea how this universe differs from his own, and by how much. He takes a gamble, pulls down the collar of his shirt to show his arc reactor. That seems to be the ticket, because the desk clerk’s eyebrows shoot up. “It’s Avengers business,” Tony says. 

They shuffle Tony toward the elevator and let him know that they’ll announce him. They don’t tell him what floor he’s supposed to be going to, so he just selects the floor that his own office is on and hopes for the best. 

He’s not sure what to expect when he steps out of the elevator, but he still finds himself surprised. There’s a woman sitting behind the desk at the back of the room, and he stumbles to a halt in the entryway, suddenly struck by how much she looks like his mother. The woman gives him an amused look, but her eyes are excited, quizzical. 

“So it’s going to be one of those days, huh?” she asks.

 

The woman’s name is Natasha Stark. They’re very alike, and their universes are very similar. It’s not difficult for Tony to convince her that he’s the real deal, which he’s very grateful for, but he probably owes that more to the strange lives they lead as Avengers than any trusting nature on her part. Natasha is delighted to meet him, and she listens with empathy as he explains how he’d found himself in her universe. 

Natasha takes him back to her workshop at her Avengers’ Headquarters. 

Her setup is different than Tony’s, but just as good. Once he’s gotten past the habit of pulling open the wrong drawers while he’s searching for something in particular, he feels right at home.

Natasha makes it easy. She’s kind and full of energy, and she wants nothing more than to help him get home.

He needs another teleporter, and without any better ideas, he build a replica of the one who got him here from the pocket dimension. He finishes much faster, with the proper tools and supplies, but it still takes time to assemble. Natasha settles down next to him and watches him work for a few minutes before she move on to busy herself with other things. 

When he’s done, Tony gives the design and model to Natasha and asks for her advice. She’s admitted she’s never built anything like this before, but Tony’s sure they can work out some of the bugs if they put their heads together. Natasha is easy to work with, and just as bright as Tony when it comes to tech. Her designs are familiar, not-quite the same as his own, but enough so that they mesh well together. 

They’re almost ready to start running some preliminary tests when the door to the lab opens. Tony turns and sees Steve standing in the doorway. Steve is holding a pizza, and he when Natasha’s eyes land on it her face lights up. For a brief moment a grin steals across Steve’s face, the same self-satisfied smirk Tony has seen countless times before. Homesickness hits him like a punch to the gut, but Natasha and Steve are too distracted to notice. 

Tony quickly masters himself, determined not to let his homesickness show on his face. He’s certain he’s gotten himself under control when Natasha springs up from her chair, crosses the room to Steve, and plants one on him.

Natasha turns back to introduce him, takes one look at Tony’s face, and busts up laughing.

“I’m going to go out on a limb,” she says, “and guess that you and Steve aren’t married in your universe?”

A true Avenger, Steve is unfazed by the stranger in his wife’s laboratory, fixing him with a curious look. Tony scrubs at his forehead and laughs her question off, “Uh, hm, no. He’s managed to dodge that bullet, by mercy of not being interested in men.”

That, moreso even than the implication that Tony comes from another universe, paints a dubious expression on this Steve’s face. Tony decides very firmly to not put much thought into that observation, though, for the sake of not getting his hopes up. 

(Never mind that aside from the obvious, he and Natasha are strikingly alike, and maybe that means that this Steve and his own Steve are too…)

Tony quickly cuts that line of thought off to change the subject. The pizza Steve brought smells delicious, and Tony is absolutely starving. He hasn’t eaten anything since before their battle with Ultron. He hadn’t needed to eat in the pocket dimension, thanks to Strange’s spell, but now that he was free, his stomach seemed determined to make up for lost time.

He watches them interact while they eat. Steve and Natasha settle onto the sofa, and Tony pulls up a chair opposite them. They’re casual in their affection, bumping shoulders, sitting close. Tony wonders how long they’ve been married, that they’re so comfortable around each other. The thought only makes him more homesick. 

The portal is ready to test, though, so Tony decides to focus on that instead.

 

When they’ve run their diagnostics and are satisfied that the portal is as finished as it’s going to get, Steve and Natasha prepare to see him off. They give him a bag, a handful of supplies, some tools from Natasha’s workshop just in case he needs them wherever he ends up next. But before he can fire the portal up, Natasha lays a hand on his shoulder.

“One more thing,” Natasha says. She hands him a small device that looks something like a television remote. He gives her an inquisitive look, and she smiles. “It’s a communicator.”

Tony turns it over in his hands, so that he can clearly see the steady blink of a light. Searching for signal. Next to it, a dark bulb, reads connected. 

It’s searching for his universe, she tells him, calibrated to prioritize open communication lines with a similar signature to Tony’s arc reactor. It knows what Tony’s tech looks like, and it will flip through channels until it finds it. 

He doesn’t care how astronomical the odds are, or how many universes it will have to scan through to find them. Tony pulls Natasha into a hug, buries his face in her shoulder and thanks her.

 

He steps through the portal and directly into the path of an old Ford. The horn blares and they screech to a halt, cursing at him, while Tony quickly darts back to the sidewalk. He turns and watches it peel away, then takes in his surroundings. 

The street could have been pulled straight from a black and white movie. Pedestrians give him odd looks as they pass, but this is still New York, and a few curious glances are pretty much all they lend him. He spots a paper stand at the end of the street, where a teenaged boy sits and kicks his feet, bored. Tony heads over and glances at the top paper on the stack, just to confirm what he already suspects: it’s March of 1939.

That definitely poses some new challenges. Tony mentally tallies the supplies he will need to build his next portal. There’s certainly a few that would be much easier to find in his own time. He’ll have to think of early 20th century alternatives for some of these supplies. He hopes for his own sake that this universe is just...shifted in time compared to his own, somehow, because if not… If he’s forced to search both across the multiverse and through time, he’s certain he’ll never find his way home. Sitting around worrying about it will get him nowhere, though, so he picks a direction and starts to walk.

He’s not sure how he finds him, not even sure how he knew to _look_ for him, but somehow Tony finds himself standing on a dirty street corner in Brooklyn. There’s a grocery store directly across from him, and clearly through the window he spots him: young, thin and lanky, but undeniably Steve, conversing politely with one of the cashiers. 

Tony crosses the street and jogs after him. Steve has a head start, and he’s already rounding the next corner when Tony reaches the edge of the road. He hurries after him. He has no idea how he’ll find him again if he loses track of him now. 

He comes up on the next corner, fully expecting to see Steve a ways ahead of him down the road. Instead Steve is waiting for him with a fiery expression, and Tony trips over himself to stop in time to not run him over.

Steve stabs a finger at his chest. “Why are you following me?” he demands, much more fire in his voice than what you would normally expect from someone so tiny. Tony has to force himself not to laugh; Steve wasn’t kidding when he’d told him that he’d always been a hellraiser, even before becoming Captain America. 

There’s honestly no easy way to go about it, so Tony decides to be blunt: “I’m from the future.”

Tony knows he looks bizarre, with his anachronistic outfit and style. Steve gives him a look like he’s deciding whether or not to Tony is going to make Steve punch him, so he throws up his hands placatingly and adds, “I swear I’m not crazy.”

Thankfully, he also knows a truly impressive amount about Steve. A short stint of question-and-answer is enough to convince Steve that he’s not having some kind of psychotic episode. His clothes and a quick peek at the arc reactor makes the story an easier sell.

(He leaves out the interdimensional details. The story is hard enough to believe as it is.)

“Okay,” Steve says. “Why are you here? And what do you want with me, specifically?”

“I’m just trying to get home,” Tony says. There’s no way he can tell Steve how the two of them know each other in his universe, not without threatening the timeline in this one. Steve fixes him with a stubborn expression, but he can see the moment Steve decides to help him etched into his expression when he adds, “And you...I’ve got nowhere else to go.”

 

He sleeps on Steve’s floor for the first night, and wakes with an awful crick in his neck.

Still, it puts a roof over his head. It’s nice to have a friendly face around. Steve wakes up unnecessarily early and boils water on the stove to make coffee. Tony smiles, remembering his universe’s Steve’s wisecracks about Tony’s coffee maker. Steve notices, and raises a questioning eyebrow. 

“You still drink coffee in the future?” he asks as he pours it out into mismatched mugs. Steve takes the one with the small crack in the side for himself, ever the polite host. 

“I’ve been told I drink a little too much,” he admits. He doesn’t add that it’s mostly from Steve himself, when he caught Tony up far too late to be healthy. Steve can hardly talk, though. Tony has on good authority that he’s overly fond of the terrible “dessert in a cup” coffee treats that no person should ever consume on the regular. Tony grins. “And if you think coffee is good _now_ , just wait,” Tony says.

Once he’s a little more awake, Tony sets to sketching out his designs for his next portal attempt. Steve doesn’t exactly have a workshop ready for him to use. He hardly has paper and a pencil to spare, offering Tony a nubby little pencil and free reign of the scratch paper he’d stuffed into his kitchen drawer. Tony jots notes for adjustments on the back of an old flyer scrap and plans his next move.

Money is its own issue. Tony scours the papers and manages to find a job opening at an electronics repair shop. The job interview is extremely easy, and he’s hired on the spot. It ends up being more of a blessing than he’d realized when he applied. The shop has a huge store room full of old, unsalvageable scrap, and they’re more than happy to sell it to him on the cheap when he promises to haul it out of there himself. 

Steve eyes his growing pile of junk with open curiosity, the science fiction fan in him clearly showing through. He settles down on the bed with his back to the wall and watches Tony work while he sketches idly on a stack of loose leaf paper. At some point he makes toast, which he offers to Tony with little preamble, and then shuffles around him in the cramped space to dig out his clothes for work tomorrow. 

The tech he has to work with is shabby and years behind what Tony is used to. He’ll have to use the arc reactor as a power source again; there’s nothing even close to high enough output to power a portal, within his price range or otherwise. Hell, they haven’t even split the atom yet in this universe.

So he has to make due, which means spending a frustratingly long time adapting this technology to be compatible with the arc reactor. What took hours in Natasha’s workshop takes days here. It’s not an easy undertaking, but he has a vague picture in his mind of what he needs to do.

Tony works until he can hardly keep his eyes open, by the dim light of a shabby, half-spent candle. When he’s too tired to think straight, he blows out the candle and pushes himself up from his seat. Literally nothing in the world looks less inviting than the crooked hardwood right now, and Tony considers it only briefly before he decides that he’s too old to sleep on the floor again.

“Move over,” he mumbles to Steve with a halfhearted push. Steve huffs in his sleep and rolls onto his side without protest, and Tony lies down on the bed in the spot that he’d vacated. Sleep takes him as soon as his head hits the pillow.

Steve’s voice breaks through his sleep, pulling at the edge of his consciousness. Tony grumbles an apology, shifting a little closer to the edge, thinking maybe he’s crowding him. It’s not until the voice comes again, more insistent, that Tony realizes it’s coming from across the room, not the man next to him. 

He snaps awake in an instant and scrambles to dig the communicator out of his bag. 

“Steve?” he asks.

“Oh, thank god, Tony,” Steve’s voice cuts through the comm, and Tony’s heart leaps to his throat. “Where _were_ you?”

Tony laughs a watery laugh and shifts so his back is against the wall. He draws his knees to his chest and rests the communicator between them, balanced next to his face so he can turn the volume down low. On the bed Steve is quiet and still. Tony is sure he woke him in his frantic dive for the communicator, but he politely feigns sleep to give Tony some privacy. 

Tony wonders belatedly whether this Steve recognizes his own voice through the communicator, or whether the static is enough to fool him. Either way, Tony dials the volume down low, just in case his Steve says something to upset this timeline. 

“It’s a long story,” Tony says, “But the good news is, I’m on my way home.”

“What happened?” Steve asks.

Tony tells him about his transporter, and how he hasn’t quite figured out how to direct it yet. He tells Steve about Natasha, and that universe’s Steve. He tells him he’s met someone else interesting, too, and he can tell him about it later, but for now, he just wanted to tell Steve that he was all right.

“I’m sorry for worrying you,” Tony says. 

Steve huffs, something between a laugh and a sigh. His voice sounds fond, relieved, “Honestly, I’m just glad you’re okay.”

“I’m trying again soon,” Tony admits. “And the communicator might lose this connection. I don’t know for sure. But I have to keep going.”

“Tony, be careful,” Steve says.

“Careful is my middle name,” Tony says, just to hear Steve laugh. “I don’t know when we’ll be able to talk again.”

“Okay,” Steve says quietly, so that Tony can hardly hear him over the static. He clears his throat. “Okay. Be safe, Tony.”

 

Tony leaves the younger Steve Rogers with scorch marks on his hardwood floor, a pile of dissected tech, and the first of what would no doubt be many unbelievable stories in his lifetime.

This time teleporting feels more like jumping into a pool of water, weightless, dragging on him. On instinct he holds his breath and closes his eyes against the bright flash of the portal, and waits for the feeling to lift. 

When he opens his eyes, his heart leaps at the familiar walls of Avengers tower, for a brief moment thinking he’s home. Then, Tony blinks and turns to face the kitchen, and he sees himself and Steve, standing at the stove, in the middle of bickering over whether their pancakes should be blueberry or chocolate chip, and his hope shatters. Presumably Tony’s arrival had stopped them in the middle of their debate, because they’d both turned to stare.

This Tony is older, and it shows in the lines of his face, the faint crow’s feet around his piercing blue eyes. His hair is more gray than black, cropped short, no nonsense. Steve has aged better, thanks to the serum, the gray only just starting to show at his temples, his face a little less weathered. 

They don’t even look surprised to see him. Stark just dries his hands on a dishtowel and cocks his head at him. “Are you from a different universe, or a different timeline?”

“Universe,” Steve guesses. He shrugs when Stark turns to ask why, gesturing casually with his spatula. “He’s got brown eyes.”

The other Tony squints at him, “So he does,” he says. He tosses the rag down on the countertop. “Pancakes?”

“Uh,” Tony hesitates, momentarily caught off guard. “Sure.”

“Chocolate chip or blueberry?” Steve asks. Stark swats at him.

“Oh, stop,” Stark says. “Of course he wants blueberry.”

He pulls out a stool for Tony to sit. 

 

This universe’s Steve and Tony have been through hell and back together. They’re comfortable with each other in a way that even Natasha and her Steve might have admired. Tony can’t help but show his surprise when he learns that this version of himself is married to Steve, too. This Steve gives him a knowing look when he expresses his surprise that two of the Tony’s he’s met so far have both managed to marry _Steve_. He mentions that he and his Steve are just friends, and then steers the conversation away to mention the Avengers. They’re like family to him, and he wants to go home. Steve and Stark smile fondly at that, clearly able to relate.

These two have both been Avengers for decades, though they insist they’re retired. (Tony politely doesn’t mention the newspaper with the front page spread of the two of them standing in full uniform with a group of young heroes he doesn’t recognize. Retired. Absolutely.)

All those years of leading the Avengers have made days like this old hat. Tony’s not the first dimension hopper they’ve dealt with. He’s not even the fifth. Hearing that puts a little bubble of hope in his chest. Stark laughs and waves him off breezily when Tony asks if he knows how to get him home.

“I can get you wherever you want to go,” he says easily. “Hell, I’m sure I’ve still got a portal generator lying around here somewhere…”

Tony can’t believe his luck. He wants to tell his own Steve the good news, but the communicator has flipped back to scanning channels, searching once again. Instead he holds onto it tightly, like a lifeline, and asks how soon they can get started. 

 

 

All Stark has to do is calibrate it, and the portal is ready to go. He laughs when Tony comments on how easy he makes it all look. 

“Well, you’re about twenty years too late to see all the hard work,” he says. “But if it makes you feel better, it _was_ a bit of a struggle.”

It looks strange, a thin line of electricity stretched between two poles. (A part of him is a little disappointed it doesn’t look like a Stargate. He keeps that to himself.) “All you have to do is touch it,” Stark assures him, “and it will get you where you need to go.”

“I can’t thank you enough,” Tony tells him. Stark shrugs. It really is no big deal to him, the equivalent of digging up an old laptop to lend. 

“You can make it up to us, though,” Steve says. Stark makes a little _ah_ sound, like he recognizes where this is going.

“We’ve seen a lot of different universes,” Steve says. 

“You have no idea,” Stark adds in wryly. Steve glances at him and smiles, takes his hand, and Stark thaws.

“And in all that, and despite all our differences and our mistakes and our disagreements, we’ve always managed to find each other. In every one. So give your Steve a chance, will you? While you’re young. Don’t waste it.”

Tony thinks of Natasha as well, and how happy she and her Steve had been. He nods and promises to try.

 

He appears in the middle of the Avengers living room, no flash of light, no preamble, just in one universe one moment, and a different one in the next. He appears directly behind Sam and Clint, who are sitting on the couch squabbling over the remote. Tony can’t help but smile at the normalcy of it all. 

“We do have more than one TV, you know,” he says, just to watch the two of them leap out of their skin.

“Tony!” Sam shouts. He leaps off the couch, remote forgotten. “You’re back!”

“Going for the dramatic entrance, I see,” Natasha says from behind him, and when Tony turns he sees that she’s grinning. “Welcome back.”

“You know me,” Tony says, not even trying to hide his distraction. “Where’s…”

“Steve?” Natasha interrupts. “Try the gym.”

“Thanks,” Tony says, already backpedaling. They’d spoken only hours ago, but Tony is dying to see Steve again, longing a physical ache in his chest. None of the other Avengers seem put off by his quick escape—though Sam has already gone to tell the others, leaving Clint the winner of the remote by default. 

Tony thinks that maybe he should wonder at how easily the other Avengers accept that there’s _someone_ he’s more eager to see, or the fact that Natasha knew exactly who he was looking for without asking. They probably knew about Steve keeping him company over the communicator, had probably suffered through his worry when Tony had suddenly failed to answer. 

Tony would wonder about how obvious they were to everyone but each other, but then Tony is stepping up to gym, door ajar, and suddenly it doesn’t matter. 

He makes eye contact with Steve through the door, mid-way to taking a drink from his water bottle. Tony grins at the shocked expression on Steve’s face, and then has approximately three seconds to brace himself before Steve envelops him in a hug so intense he feels his feet lift off the ground.

“Ugh, you’re sweaty,” Tony complains, hugging back with everything he can muster. Steve is warm and solid and hugging him is better than any homecoming he could have had. 

“My God, Tony,” Steve lets him go to back up just enough to swat at him. “You scared the hell out of me. Us. Out of us,” he corrects. 

Tony rests his hands on Steve’s shoulders. Somehow he finds the courage to curl his fingers in the fabric of Steve’s shirt. “I’ll make it up to you,” Tony says, and then he kisses him.

He has a moment to think of Natasha and Steve, young and full of life, of old but well loved wedding bands and bickering over pancakes, of how happy he’d been to hear from Steve every day. He thinks Steve feels the same. He _hopes_ Steve feels the same.

He has a moment to hesitate, wonders if he’s made a mistake, if there’s a universe where maybe Steve doesn’t love him after all, and maybe he’s living in it. He has a moment to think all of these things. 

And then, miraculously, Steve kisses back.


End file.
